


An Awfully  Big Adventure

by the_alchemist



Category: Richard III - Shakespeare
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 12:52:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_alchemist/pseuds/the_alchemist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Richard III goes to the Tower to visit the younger of the two princes he imprisoned there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Awfully  Big Adventure

**Author's Note:**

> Written for aris_tgd in the 2008 Histories Ficathon.

"Who's there?" The boy huddled in the corner of the room, sitting on a pile of blankets, hugging a pillow: the bed was too big, too exposed to lie in. "Who's there?" His candle ran out a long time ago, he couldn't tell how long. "Who's there? Edward? Is that you?" He was sure there was someone just outside the door.  
It was not pitch black. In the weak moonlight he could make out vague shapes: the bed, the wardrobe, the table. He knew it was just furniture – he was eleven, after all, not a baby – and yet... He hugged the pillow tighter, and drew further back into the corner.  
"Edward? Please answer me. Edward?"  
He didn't know what he was afraid of. Ghosts? Or those intent on making him a ghost?  
"Please?"  
It hadn't been so bad when Edward was there.

He woke up suddenly, surprised he had been asleep. The door was open, and there was someone else in the room.  
"Edward?"  
The newcomer was too short to be Edward, though not a child. Several seconds passed before a match strike and then dim candlelight shining on a familiar face.  
"Uncle Richard." The boy's namesake, his father's brother, his captor.  
Uncle Richard smiled, but said nothing.  
"Where is my brother?"  
"Dead." Still he smiled.  
The boy swallowed. His mind was a tangle of miseries, but among them there was one bright thread, and it was that which first found voice. "Then I am king." His back straightened involuntarily, and that sent a surge of power through him. He stood up, brushing the dust off his knees.  
"That's why I am here." The man limped closer to the boy.  
His heart beat faster. Was this it? Did he have minutes to live? Seconds? There was nothing in him but a fierce will to live, and horrible dizzy out-of-control sickness.  
"I don't mean what you think I mean, you know," the man said. "I only want to talk to you."  
He moved even closer. Too close. The boy could feel his breath.  
"Aren't you going to ask me what I want to talk about?"  
The boy gave in and moved backwards.  
"You never used to be so shy. Let's see if you can guess. Do you think there was anything unusual about your reaction to my news of your brother's death?"  
The boy said nothing.  
"No? You said 'then I am King'. You didn't cry or rail against me, though you no doubt rightly guessed I had him killed. Your first thought was of yourself, that you are now a sovereign. As mine would have been."  
"If I am king, you are my subject," said the boy. He hadn't meant to say it, but the words just came tumbling out. He was still afraid, but the blind terror was gone, and a strange recklessness had crept into its place.  
"Even so."  
"Then kneel." It was a stupid thing to say, and it would surely be the death of him. He berated himself fiercely for it: what had he been thinking? It might have felt like he had nothing to lose, but when you're alive, there's always hope, and when you're dead there's nothing.  
Yet as he did so, the man moved towards the bed and leaning on it, awkwardly, painfully did as he was told. He knelt. "What now, my sovereign?" he said.  
What now? "Light. I want more light. Lots more light."

A match was struck and there was light. And the man and the boy both thought the same thing. That is what it is to be King: it is to be God.  
It was slow though. The man struggled through twenty candles, one by one, sometimes forcing his stiff and disobedient fingers to hold the match, sometimes trying to do it one-handed, which was worse. The boy watched him, smiling, until he lost patience. "Enough!" he said.  
The chamber was transformed. Sunlight showed the dust and made the room look faded and dirty, moonlight rendered it eerie, but candlelight made it almost fit for a king. As the boy looked round in satisfaction, he noticed a box on the bed that had not been there before. "What's in there?"  
The man smiled. "I was wondering when you would spot that. Will you open it, or shall I?"

The boy was bored of the man's fumbling, and besides, what child fails to take delight in opening mystery presents? He undid the catch, tossed aside the layers of protective silk, and despite his determination to maintain a composed and regal air, gasped in wonder.  
It was not that he had not seen it before: of course he had. But never up close. And never to touch, and certainly not to wear...  
"I was going to make you a paper crown," said the man. "That's what they did to your grandsire, but I thought why not bring the real thing? I've brought some cloth to put round the inside so it will not be too big for you."

Suddenly, it was all too strange. The boy had been standing up for too long, and had not slept enough or eaten well for weeks. He did not understand. Nothing made sense. "My grandsire?" There was no reason why he latched onto that particular word.  
The man caught him with surprising agility before he fell, and sat him down on the bed, remaining standing himself, like a servingman.  
"My father. You are very like him. I am very like him too. There is something about us Richards of York. Can I get you food? Drink?"  
"No." Sitting down had cleared his head a little.  
"May I?" The man gestured towards the crown. The boy almost said "no", but everything seemed futile, so he just shrugged. He wished he hadn't though. Seeing his Uncle's crooked fingers caress the golden circle made him feel sick. It somehow reminded him of a time he'd accidentally walked in on his father with a young woman, one of his sisters' friends, pushing his fingers up her skirt, both of them grunting like animals.  
"Yes," the man continued, "we Richard Plantagenets are strange animals, especially when it comes to this." He held up the crown, then brushed it against his cheek, closing his eyes for a moment. The boy itched to snatch it away from him. "Your grandfather was lucky, it was his by right. He didn't need to think about the fact he would have taken it anyway, though he would have done. He could go along with all the pious conventions, eldest son to eldest son, and pretend to himself he believed it all. But you and me... 'Uneasy lies the head that doesn't wear a crown'. There, you see!"  
"What?"  
"You scratched your head. It itches because there should be gold there. It aches with longing for it."

The boy wanted to cry. He desperately desired to close his eyes and go to sleep, but he was too afraid that when he did he would never again wake.  
"Well," said the man after a few seconds. "I suppose it's time for your coronation."  
The boy looked down at his feet.  
"Come on," said the man. "We kings don't get to sleep, you know. We're famous for it."  
"You're not a king." The boy knew he sounded babyish and petulant and hated himself for it.  
"What did you say?"  
"I said, YOU'RE NOT A KING!" He stood up and yelled it as loudly as he could, right in the man's face.  
The man laughed, and bowed. "Forgive me, my liege. Now, where would you care to be enthroned?"  
"Westminster Abbey."  
The man appeared to think about it for a moment. "How about that chair over there?"  
"It doesn't look like a throne to me."  
"Well, let's see what we can do, shall we? The bedspread. That's red and gold." He tugged at it. "Pardon me, my liege, but you might have to help me."  
The boy folded his arms. Quicker than he would have thought possible, there was a dagger at his throat. "I said, help me."

Struggling not to panic, the boy did as he was told, and together they arranged the bedspread on the chair. Strangely, perhaps, it was once the panic was over, at the moment the dagger was put away that the boy knew for certain he would not live to see dawn. He found it difficult to feel as he ought to about that – he found it difficult to feel anything. So instead he focussed on the game of makebelieve.  
"We should put the candlesticks round the throne," he said. And they did. Then they both stepped back to admire their handiwork.  
"It is time," announced the boy. "You will stand behind the throne, and I shall process towards it. I shall sit down and you will place the crown on my head."  
And it was so.

It was so strange to do it in silence that the boy almost asked the man to sing, but he thought perhaps the man was a bad singer, and that could spoil everything. So instead he tried to create the blaze of trumpets and the cheering crowds in his mind. He thought he heard them, but very far off.

The cloth lining worked relatively well, particularly given that the coronator only really had the use of one hand: there were only a few seconds of fiddling before it stayed on securely and not too uncomfortably. Then the man took a wide circle round and stood before the throne. The boy considered commanding him to kneel again, but realised he would probably knock a candle over, or have to hold on to the arm of the throne, and the thin veil keeping it all from being a charade would be shattered.

"What is it, to be a king?" asked the man, as though it were part of the ritual.  
"It is to feel the weight of a nation upon our royal shoulders," said the boy, half remembering something his tutor had taught him. "The cares of each of my subjects are my cares, and I must bear them. And as they sleep, then must I lie awake."  
"You don't believe that," said the man. "I'll tell you what it is. When you watched me struggling to light all those candles, dropping the matches on the floor, watched it hurt when I stooped to pick them, watched my frustration, watched me do it over and over again, quiet and cruel and smiling: that is what it is to be a king, to be able to look upon a whole nation that way. And that's our secret, yours and mine and your grandfather's: we know, and maybe no one else knows, that there is no deformity so monstrous as not to be a king."  
The boy touched the gold encircling his head. He was too tired to think properly, but it felt as though what his uncle said might be true. He looked around, wondering whether it was just the room or whether the whole land shone a little differently now he was king.

"It is almost dawn," said the man. To his surprise, he found it difficult to find the words to bring up the subject of the boy's encroaching death.  
"Yes," said the boy. The man hoped that the familiar association of dawn with executions would mean he wouldn't have to mention it first, but the boy said no more.  
"Yes," said the man, giving it another go. It occurred to him he could just kill, without talking about it at all, but it seemed rude. "I should let you... rest," he said, trying to imbue the word 'rest' with the kind of sinister tone that would imply it was to be followed by "in peace."  
"I am very tired," said the boy.  
"Yes."  
"Yes."  
He had poison with him, and the dagger, and of course there were the pillows on the bed. He had hoped to use these, as Tyrrell had done with Edward. It did not matter much though. It might be best just to stab him on the 'throne' where he sat.  
"Perhaps you wish to say your prayers before you... go to bed." Yes. That time the sinister tone had surely worked: that had to be terror in the boy's eyes.  
"I do not believe in God." That surprised both of them, the boy because he had not known it was true before he spoke it, and the man to discover that his nephew was even more like him than he had imagined.  
"You are wise," said the man. "There is no God but the king."  
"And that is me."  
The man shook his head. "And that is me."

It might have worked – the boy was the faster runner of the two – but he decided to kick over the candle just a little too late. The man's heavy boot stamped out the fire as with surprising strength he seized the boy by his shirt at the neck and threw him on the bed. He used his whole weight to hold the pillow over the small face.

When all movement stopped, he let his own muscles go limp too, and fell down on top. He lay there for a long time, thinking of his father, of his youngest brother, who had also been murdered as a child, and of himself. He felt very lonely, and every part of his body ached. 'I have no brother, I am like no brother; and this word 'love' that greybeards call divine, be resident in men like one another, and not in me: I am myself alone.'

The crown had fallen off in the struggle and lay near the foot of the bed. Holding onto one of the bedposts, he dragged himself upright, then dropped down onto the floor beside it. He examined it for damage, and, finding none, gave it a loving wipe with the cloth he used to pad it. He popped it onto his own head. It fitted him perfectly. This cheered him up in an instant. He opened the curtains. It looked as though it was going to be a lovely day.


End file.
